 |
| The 2000 Railroad Hobby Show flyer. |
Back in the mid-1940s, Ellis D. Atwood, rescued various pieces of Maine two foot narrow gauge railroad equipment for his cranberry plantation in Carver, MA. Most of the equipment came from the Bridgeton and Harrison/Bridgeton and Saco River Railroad. Although Atwood didn't intend for his railroad to become a tourist attraction, it did. It was named Edaville Railroad (from his initials) and a 5.5 mile loop of track served as a base of operations.
Through the years, a number of modifications were made to the railroad's equipment - including painting the locomotives in bright colors and giving the engines fake diamond smoke stacks and older style headlights to make them look older. From all the historic photos and videos of the railroad, it appears almost all of the locomotives received this treatment at sometime or another. At some point, starting as early at the 1970s, one of the railroad's original locomotive profiles (#8, a two foot gauge 2-4-4 T) was made into the official Edaville logo.
In 1991, the original Edaville closed and most of the original equipment became the nucleus of the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad in Portland, ME . For a couple of brief periods in the 1990s, different groups were able to get the railroad operating but nothing was able to be sustained. In 1999, a new group reopened Edaville, using both new and old equipment.
Sometime after Edaville closed in the 1990s, the profile of #8 was added to the Railroad Hobby Show flyers - without the Edaville name and a change of number from #8 to #2. This logo could be found in the corner of the flyer (top right corner on the 2000 flyer above). This logo was removed in the mid-2000s when the current show logo was adopted and the show was officially renamed the Amherst Railway Society Railroad Hobby Show.
Some of the old signs with the original Edaville logo are preserved at the current Edaville operation and some nostalgic t-shirts with the historic logo have been put up for sale by the railroad. Since re-opening in 1999, Edaville did have a table at the show for a few years, but stopped for a while before returning again this past year.
If you'd like to learn more about the current Edaville Railroad, visit: www.edaville.com
Thanks for the story Joe! If you'd like to share a show story, we'd love to share it here on the blog. Please visit www.tributetospringfield.com/contribute to share your story.
